“To Be so Like a Bird in a Cage”: touch, comfort and connecting with the eighteenth-century madhouse

Abstract

For the modern researcher, the eighteenth-century private madhouse proves an intriguing space. Sometimes conceived as sites of innovative care, they suffered an appalling reputation across contemporary cultural sources. This article expands this misleading conception by focusing on the sensory landscape of one madhouse through letters written by Urania Fellowes about her privately incarcerated sister, Dorothea. Considering methodological challenges faced when excavating sensory and material histories, the article views letters as compelling channels of shared sensorial experience. Arguing that Urania utilized associative positive feelings linked to touch to connect with and care for her sister, it presents sensorial empathy as a key coping mechanism through which relatives might emotionally, temporally and spatially connect with the incarcerated.